Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by drb311 | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

drb311

There's an old saying:

"If you want something done ask a busy person."

Busy people always come through for you. I used to think this was because they were super efficient, super disciplined.

But maybe your task is a welcome distraction from something even worse?

And besides, everything we do is a distraction from the most looming, vaguest, most intractable deadline of all.

The End.

View on HN

This actually makes sense. I seem to be more efficient at getting things done when I have multiple things to do, but can never get something done if it's one and only thing left. I get easily distracted by other things that keep me away from accomplishing that one task or goal.

It's a bit of selection bias though, isn't it? It seems like you're bad at only having one thing to do, but it's likely that by the time you only have one thing left, that very thing is what you've been putting off the longest. And you may have been putting it off for a reason (you don't want to do it, it's hard, it hasn't been thought out, etc.)

Could it be that we humans are afraid of running out of things to do? After all, if we finish that last task, it would seem that we no longer serve a purpose. As long as we have one task left, there is still hope that we can find more to do.

Of course, that is a poor way of thinking since all it does is make you lose your sense of purpose before you actually run out of tasks, but the human brain is weird like that sometimes.

It's probably not so much an innate fear of nothing to do, but a resistance to the mental costs of having a slow workflow.

Or maybe busy people often have trouble saying 'no'

Yes!

It may be they're super efficient, but more likely in my experience is that they're often super busy because they're bad at saying no.

> I used to think this was because they were super efficient, super disciplined.

I also used to think this when I was working in hourly task units like software development or consulting. Then when I started managing people I realized that being less busy while being efficient and organized was better. Flexibility is a great asset. I am not talking about working 4 hours but having room to think outside your daily or weekly issues.

I think most people are both, I certainly notice it as a developer, times when my head is in the right place and my productivity goes through the roof and then the downtimes where it can be half that. I think it does tend to coincide with how busy you are, if you have too much time to think that's all you tend to do, over analysing tasks rather than just getting on with it.

You went too deep.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com